Thursday, January 22, 2015

Satya Nadella's Got a Plan to Make You Care About Microsoft. The First Step? Holograms | WIRED

Final paragraphs from the latest Wired cover story, an extensive Microsoft-in-transition profile

"It will take a while for any of these competitors to succeed, and Kipman suggests that if users and developers take Project HoloLens in another direction, or don't take to it at all, Microsoft will be OK. The real beneficiaries of Project HoloLens will be the company's operating system, Windows 10; its cloud-computing product, Azure; and its suite of software products, Office 365. They'll continue to improve even if Project HoloLens doesn't. What's important is that more people find more ways to use them. What's important is that, as the next new technology platform emerges, whether it's Project HoloLens or not, Microsoft gets there early.

Just when will the next computing interface take hold? I press Nadella on this, but he's not one to predict the future. “What is that quote? I forget now who said this,” he says. “You always overestimate what you can get done in a year and underestimate what you can get done in 10 years.”

Later, I look up the quote. He got the gist of it right. And the person who said it was Bill Gates."